


Rose Rosette

by Anonymous



Category: American Beauty (1999)
Genre: Existential Crisis, Internalized Homophobia, Mild Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 14:07:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30123948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The tall, weeping man in Lester's arms smells like autumn rain.
Relationships: Lester Burnham/Frank Fitts
Collections: Anonymous





	Rose Rosette

Cold. Wet. Supple shirt. Dripping skin. The garage smells like marijuana. The tall, weeping man in Lester's arms smells like autumn rain.  
  
Lester shudders as Fritz smooths his hands up his back, leaving cool smears of rainwater rolling down his skin. Fritz rubs his fingers deep into Lester's flesh, caressing as if savoring the pliant texture of it. Rainwater beads up on the tip of Fritz's nose as he raises his head from his shoulder.  
  
Fritz moves his gaze to his lips. Lester deigns to simply look into his eyes. Deep, watery, vulnerable baby blues. Quite vulnerable. Unusually so. But if anything, Lester's discovered that everything is beautifully unusual in this small, idiotic world. Though unsure, he smiles at the man standing inches from his face. It's so strangely brilliant, everything, ultimately.  
  
Fritz kisses him on the mouth. Then it becomes colder. Wetter. Odd. Odd how Lester takes Fritz's shoulders and pushes them softly — deliberately soft, so Fritz doesn't quite pull away. Odd how Lester lets the kiss linger past the moment it melts into something soft and still and warm.  
  
His daughter's friend is a nymph made of gentle curves and velvet rose petals. She graces Lester's most beautiful dreams and taunts him when he's awake. The very qualities that draw him to her make her perfect body seem, to Lester's conscience, like some sweet forbidden fruit.  
  
Plucking the scarlet apple, did Eve look upon her herself and question her own morality? Did she doubt the serpent? Did she falter?  
  
One thing is for certain: when she partook in temptation, she immediately came to regret it.  
  
Lester slides his palm to Fritz's icy face, tenderly smoothing his thumb over the rings beneath his eyes. Fritz kisses like a virgin: slow, gentle, trembling in fear. For as libidinous as Lester is, his lips are hesitant too. Hesitation is the opposite of fun, the enemy of action — so he simply chooses to damn it.   
  
Burying his hand in Fritz's short hair, Lester drinks in the responding moan and cherishes the soft, grateful shudder beneath his palm as he pulls the man tight against his chest. He opens his mouth and falls victim to Fritz's inexpert, unsure tongue, hesitating when Fritz's breath hitches.  
  
Lester pulls slowly back and looks into his troubled eyes. "Relax," he whispers. "It's alright. It's safe." He runs a hand up and down Fritz's cold, rain-slick neck. He nods his head slowly, deliberately, until Lester nods back. "I'm going to go find you something dry to wear. Is that alright?"  
  
"Yes," Fritz murmurs. He looks flushed, stunned, wiping the water off of his face. "Go."  
  
Lester breathes a chuckle and backs away with his hands up, palms facing Fritz to soothe his unease. He picks up the garage remote and clicks it off, shutting out the night and its furious, wicked rain. He crosses the garage and digs through an old plastic storage bin of clothes, choosing a pair of cloth pants and an old sweatshirt from university. Turning around, he lifts them up.  
  
"Mind these?"  
  
Fitz, looking miserable with his arms around himself, dripping rainwater on the ground, shakes his head and says, "Doesn't matter."  
  
Closing the box and walking over to him, Lester grins unbidden. Really, genuinely, nothing matters. Not the world, not the rain, not his wife's fucktoy, not these clothes, not a single fucking thing.  
  
"Doesn't matter," he says to no one at all. He puts the clothes in Fritz's arms, then smiles into his miserable, lost face. "Isn't that fucking beautiful?"  
  
Fritz's eyes rove over Lester's bare chest, still hot with sweat and damp with rain from when Lester let him weep in his arms. Lester watches him take a shuddering breath, observing the turmoil that passes through his eyes.  
  
"I don't know," Fritz murmurs, fresh tears beading up on his lashes. He makes a noise like he's swallowing a sob. "I don't know if it's beautiful or if it's..."  
  
"Okay, okay, okay, hey..." Taking the clothes from Fritz's hands, Lester tuts soothingly, placing them on the chair behind him. He places his hands on Fritz's arms and rubs gentle circles into his skin, moving closer. "You don't have to know right now. That's perfectly okay. Breathe for a minute."  
  
Fritz closes his eyes under Lester's touch, breaths turning slower, deeper, calmer. Lester gauges his comfort by the pace of his breaths, ghosting his fingers along his cold, slick skin and feeling it erupt in goosebumps in his wake. He reaches the him of Fritz's white shirt. The rain soaked fabric drips into his hand.  
  
"Just tell me what you need."  
  
Fritz opens his eyes. 


End file.
